1. Field
The described embodiments relate to electronic devices with network connections. More specifically, the described embodiments relate to electronic devices that transfer audio using the Bluetooth Low Energy standard.
2. Related Art
There are numerous situations in which a person may want or need to use an assistive-listening device (e.g., a hearing aid) to enable the person to hear given source of sound. For example, a hearing-impaired person may need an assistive-listening device to amplify sound to the point where the sound can be perceived. As another example, a person in an environment where transmitting clearly audible sound through the air is difficult or impossible (e.g., a person in a large crowd listening to another person speak) may wish to use an assistive-listening device amplify a particular source of sound.
Generally, assistive-listening devices, and particularly assistive-listening devices such as in-ear hearing aids, are of small form factors, meaning that the batteries that power the devices correspondingly small. For this reason, many assistive listening devices have very restrictive power-consumption requirements. Given the restrictive power-consumption requirements, the options available for wirelessly transmitting audio to existing assistive-listening devices have been limited. Designers have therefore created proprietary systems for wirelessly transmitting audio to assistive-listening devices. However, for numerous reasons (expense, complexity, external equipment, etc.), these systems have not been widely adopted.
Although there are a number of widely-available standards for wirelessly transmitting audio between devices, the standards typically require the consumption of too much power for implementation in assistive-listening devices. For example, many modern electronic devices use the Bluetooth Classic standard (“BTC”) for wirelessly transmitting audio (BTC is described in the Core v. 4.0 Specification for the Bluetooth System from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) of Kirkland, Wash.). However, BTC consumes too much power to be implemented in most assistive-listening devices.
Although using BTC consumes too much power to be used for transmitting audio to assistive-listening devices, the Bluetooth Specification also describes the Bluetooth Low Energy standard (“BTLE”) that enables data transfer using significantly less power than BTC. BTLE is typically used to transmit data between “slave” devices such as low-power sensors and “master” devices that can include more processing power. For example, some athletic heart-rate monitors use the BTLE standard to transmit heart rate data to a receiver such as a wrist-mounted computer or exercise equipment. However, the Bluetooth Specification does not describe a technique for transmitting and processing audio using BTLE.